Test Your Resume Know-How

True or False?

You should personalize your resume by including your interests, hobbies, and other activities. This will help you appear as more than just a piece of paper. Including these details can lead to a connection with your reader which will elevate you above the other candidates.

False. You should not include any information that could be viewed as too personal. Unless your personal activities relate directly to the position you are seeking you should leave them off of your resume. Including hobbies and other interests can have a negative effect of how your resume is received.

True or False?

Your resume is the perfect opportunity to showcase the multitude of skills and qualifications you possess. After all, the more skills you have, the greater the chance of impressing a potential employer.

While it is important to make the most of your qualifications by promoting them on your resume, the answer to this is false. If you are including every skill you have from the most advanced down to the very basic you are doing yourself a disservice. A hiring manager does not want to weed through an endless list of irrelevant skills to find the skills that are needed for the position. Your best bet is to highlight the skills that the job calls for.

True or False?

Resume objectives are outdated and should not be used.

True! Using an objective statement on your resume is extremely outdated and should not be used. A typical objective statement would identify what it was the job seeker wanted. You do not want the first impression of you to be telling an employer what it is you want. You will add more value to yourself and increase your chances of job search success if you replace the objective with a statement that tells what you can do for a potential employer. If you use an objective you risk coming off as arrogant and out of touch.

True or False?

Your resume is the single most effective marketing tool in your job search.

False. Although a resume is a highly effective tool for marketing your value to prospective employers you cannot rely on a resume alone. Gone are the days of printing and mailing a resume. In today’s digital world more and more job seekers and employers are coming together through the internet and social media. If you are not applying these strategies to your job search you will be at a disadvantage.

True or False?

You should have more than one, even several, resumes that target different positions and focus on different areas of expertise.

True. A resume is not one size fits all. Do not try to use one variation of your resume to target all of the different positions you apply to. Although they will contain much of the same information there should be differences on each resume that focus on the specifics of each position. It will be a little more effort to create alternate resumes but worth it in the value a customized resume will provide.